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Encyclopedia Britannica Loses Information-Retrieval Patent Ruling
angry tapir writes with a snippet from Good Gear Guide: "A notorious patent case about a technology that allows people to search multimedia content may finally be coming to a close. Earlier this week, a judge ruled that two patents initially awarded to Encyclopedia Britannica are invalid. The patents were built on the infamous 5,241,671 patent first unveiled by Compton's NewMedia in 1993 at the Comdex trade show. That patent, which covered the retrieval of information from multimedia content and is now owned by Britannica, would have been relevant to the many companies selling multimedia CD-ROMs at the time."
I always wonder in these sort of over-rulings where common sense has prevailed, how it sits with the other companies who DIDN'T have the patent at the time.
Is there now a resource that those companies can sue Britannica for possibly not ALLOWING them to conduct business as normal due to Britannica having a patent that's invalid?
If I wanted to make a CDROM with some info on it, and these guys jumped in and stopped me due to a patent, and now I found out the patent is invalid, I would be (pretty rightly) pissed off.
Any lawyers/patent-know-it-all's in the house?
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I always wanted to know where my mandibula was.
Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls.
I feel sorry for Encyclopedia Britannica. Like many other companies that were built on the concept of monopolizing information, they no longer have a viable business model.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Issued in 1993, invalidated in 2009, what a deal. Valid patents only last for 20 (or sometimes 17) years, so this invalid patent turned out to choke the marketplace for almost as long as a valid one would have.
Don't hate the playa. Hate the game.
a great big "fuck you".
Fuck you for taking my freedom.
Fuck you for engaging in a game where the rich steal from the poor, because the rich can afford longer law suits.
Fuck you for capitalizing on the ineptitude of the USPTO.
Fuck you for standing on the shoulders of giants, and patenting everything you can reach from there, so that no one can stand on your shoulders.
So protecting your work is evil but knocking off some one else's hard work is good? If I spend five years developing a device but some one else can knock it off in a matter of months then what's the point of developing anything new? I loose my development money plus some foreign company under prices me and I never make money at all. Patents are out of control but some encourage innovation and development of new technologies and they aren't all held by big corporations or trolls. Do you honestly believe the computer you are typing on now would exist without patents or be afordable enough that the average person could own one? The point is to use common sense when issuing patents not just scrap the system. Some things might get cheaper as companies knock off products but innovation would largely dry up. How would you feel if you'd spent every cent on an invention only to have it stole and knocked off shortly after you brought it to market? What protection do you have? Patents.
What might surprise you is the fact that the computer industry was doing just fine for forty years without patents. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (patent maximalists by anyone's standards) have said many times that if patents had been more prevalent back in the day, neither would have succeeded with their businesses.
(Incidentally it's a US company despite the name). Isn't this a case where the US Government should be sued since they own the USPTO? The publishers of Brittanica shouldn't be sued because they didn't grant the patent. I think this is a really interesting idea. Companies affected by piss-poor patent granting by the USPTO should start a class action against the US Government to enforce proper patent investigation. Up till now large companies have been beneficiaries of the system more than losers, so have had no incentive to rock the boat. Small companies may have stayed quiet in case they came across a doubtfully patentable but potentially profitable idea. But once bad patents start to be invalidated, they are potentially losers, and so the balance swings towards trying to reform the system.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Ha ha, how does anyone inventing a clever solution to a difficult problem take away your freedom? Patents just ensure that people like you and greedy capitalists, with a sense of entitlement to other people's work, don't leech off their genius. But keep acting like a some poor victim, while you've not done any work and want people to hand over the results of their hard work for free. I do agree that trivial, obvious, retarded patents like the 1-click patent should not be allowed.
Yeah, right. Without patents some poor people would have never gotten rich, since the rich have more experience, money and manpower. Patents were created to prevent the rich from stealing commercially valuable ideas from the poor so as to encourage innovation and help mankind as well.
And finally, what's wrong with software patents? Are all software inventions easy, trivial, and ordinary so that their creation deserves no protection while inventions made in other fields such as engineering, chemistry and biology get full protection of the law? If a mechanical invention consisting of various metallic and plastic parts can get patent protection, why can't a software consisting of different Objects do too?
Because a mechanical can-opener is only patented "as is". If someone else builds a different mechanical can-opener that uses a different mechanism then they are free to sell that.
Business model and software patents are starting to become "a method for selling can-openers using the internet" and "a can-opener using a touch-interface".
The patents should protect you from a direct copy and if you design a great new feature (say a new material for the cutting edges), that feature should be protected. But if someone else can come up with an even better way (using lasers attached to friggin' sharks) of opening a can your patent should protect you.
The problem is that the new patents are too broad. It's true that not all the claims will hold up in court, but how should a layman be able to tell which ones will?
That's the real problem with patents these days - they were designed in a time when 20 years still meant the patent was useful at the end; it was reasonable to give the discoverer/inventor a short term exclusive right in order to spur more invention and, overall, increase society's knowledge.
Unfortunately, for computers, 20 year old patents are virtually worthless to society. Net result is that society is paying (by restricting itself) but not getting anything worthwhile at the end.
(LZW compression, for example, is completely eclipsed by more modern standards *except* that it's part of certain file formats.)
Compare to drug patents, where they are (generally - antibiotics perhaps excepted) still relevant and useful after the patent expires.
(Plus, there is the occasional overly broad patent - no drug company would patent using any drug to cure a type of cancer; but people try and patent using a Computer to do Commerce.)
If I spend five years developing a device
And spend most of that reading every line of code to see which software patents it infringes (there will be dozens, including several that are not published because they are "pending"), and then cross-license it with the other big boys... oh sorry you aren't a top-ten company? They won't cross license it with you, but they will each license it for 5 percent of your revenue though. Unless they are a troll, in which case they will wait until you release your product, and then sue you for all your revenue. But thanks for playing.
Am I the only one going to comment that it is spelt Encyclopaedia Britannica? While an US firm, Encyclopaedia Britannica still retains the British English spelling, as well in its look up, e.g. it prefers "colour" over "color" and so forth.
Clicked pie.
Some people (me included) think that it is currently not possible to write a non-trivial application without unknowingly infringing a patent. All signs point to the total amount of active patents growing significantly in the future as well.
Does that sound like well thought out system to you?
Over broadness is a general problem of all patents, not just software and business ones. Although over-broad claims "cover more ground" and prevent the competitors from entering their turf, they risk being thrown out and invalidated due to prior art, obviousness etc. Anybody claiming an overly broad patent claim has probably invented something great or is a bottom feeder creating obvious patents such as the "can-opener using mobile touch device."
Personally, I only like the Compton Encyclopedia. Who'd have guessed that what was happening in Compton in 1993 would be so relevant now?
You completely ignored the part about how he limited patents to SOFTWARE patents right?
I support the patent system, with some serious reforms, but I will NEVER, EVER, support software patents. They stifle innovation a hell of lot more than encourage it. For the most part, they are FUCKING RIDICULOUS.
"Yeah, right. Without patents some poor people would have never gotten rich, since the rich have more experience, money and manpower. Patents were created to prevent the rich from stealing commercially valuable ideas from the poor so as to encourage innovation and help mankind as well. "
That may or may not have been the original intention, but it is certainly not what they are used for nowadays; the rich monopolising anything they can get their hands on.
That's not the problem. The problem is these are getting patents:
[$SomethingDoneForCenturies] but on a computer
[$SomethingDoneForCenturies] but done wirelessly
[$SomethingObviousToThoseSkilledInTheTrade]
Those are all not allowed to be patented, and yet due to work overload and quotas, USPTO clerks are rubber-stamping these patent apps and are leaving it up to the courts to sort out. Compounding the problem is that the clerks who SHOULD know better can fix this problem but due to workloads and quotas do not, while the courts know exactly shit about patents and technology and uphold patents which should not due to clever arguments based in emotion and propoganda and not based on law.
The end result is the little guy is getting fucked.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
While Wikipedia is an amazing effort, it will not ever be Britannica
Don't knock Wikipedia - I bet Britannica never had an entry on the various slime pits in the Masters of the Universe, um... universe. :-)
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Yeah, right. Without patents some poor people would have never gotten rich, since the rich have more experience, money and manpower.
I dunno. I daresay I have more experience than, say, Paris Hilton.* I mean, I am a (ha ha) level 5 dwarf, after all.
That's the real problem with patents these days - they were designed in a time when 20 years still meant the patent was useful at the end; it was reasonable to give the discoverer/inventor a short term exclusive right in order to spur more invention and, overall, increase society's knowledge.
Unfortunately, for computers, 20 year old patents are virtually worthless to society.
Yeah, for certain industries. The problem is the rampant anti-patent crowd on Slashdot keeps ranting about abolishing the entire patent system, or reducing the terms to 5 years or less. While that may be fine for software (only may - currently it takes almost two years just to get an application examined), it doesn't work for pharmaceuticals which have long FDA-mandated trials and expensive R&D or machines, which have much slower development cycles and more costs associated with manufacture.
Congress could fix this and simultaneously do away with all the confusion over Bilski and others by making a new category for patents, like design patents have with their 14 year term. Make a software and business method category explicitly patentable, but with a shortened term and an accelerated examination procedure.
Imagine a civilizational crisis. War, Famine, Disease, whatever. How will we recover without Britannica and its peers. The renaissance was sparked by the rediscovery of ancient books. If we lose technolgoy, how would we ever recover digitial records? A CD or DVD is a nearly magical device, with assumption piled on techniology atop compression algorithm, with healthy amounts of assumptions about scan rates and directions tossed in.
Wikipedia will be, not surprisingly, off-line.
The last print Britannica might be the last back-up check point for our civilization.
Compare to drug patents, where they are (generally - antibiotics perhaps excepted) still relevant and useful after the patent expires.
Silly me, I read that as "after the patient expires", in which case the drug patent has probably proved its uselessness, no?
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Drug companies are some of the worst for patent abuse really. I've seen patents on any drug related to a certain protein for example, they also love to patent drug x + pre existing drug modifier y (such as extended release drugs).
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Drug companies are some of the worst for patent abuse really. I've seen patents on any drug related to a certain protein for example, they also love to patent drug x + pre existing drug modifier y (such as extended release drugs).
... and neither of those are patent abuse. What's your point, other than that you understand neither patent law nor chemistry?
[Prominent CEOs] have said many times that if patents had been more prevalent back in the day, neither would have succeeded with their businesses.
That reminds me of Disney. Had copyrights been at their current life + 70 terms back in the 1940s through 1960s, we probably wouldn't have several of the films in the Disney animated canon that were first published the year after copyright in their source material expired worldwide, such as Pinocchio and The Jungle Book.
The other thing that drug companies like doing is paying the generic producers to not produce generics
The only thing this will do is get even more companies to set up shell companies to hold their patents for them. Those companies won't be making any profit so even if you fined 50% of it you still won't be getting any of it. They already do it for questionable legal procedures (RIAA), questionable monetary flows (Cayman Islands, products sold in Cuba) or for questionable products (Made in China) thus leaving the parent company protected from any blame or harm.
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The trouble with software patents is software is already covered by copyright. If I can both patent and copyright my software, why can't I both patent and copyright my novel? Art, like science and technology, is built in what came before.
I loose my development money
No, whoever backed you with capital loosed their money. And when you loose something you always risk losing it.
Patents for devices is good. Patents for software is bad. But not as bad a centuries long copyrights.
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